Home-made telescope

Richest Field telescope

I made the six-inch Newtonian reflector to use the carbon-dioxide cooled cameras, but
outfitted it with a long-focal length eyepiece so it could also function as a Richest
Field Telescope (RFT). I ground and polished the 6-inch mirror to have a focal ratio
of f/4.0. This high focal ratio mirror, when combined with a long focal legth
eyepiece, produces a bright image of extended objects in a wide field of view at low
magnification. At these low magnifications, the telescope can operate without a
finder scope and without being mounted on a tripod, although it can be attached to other
telescopes to share their mountings.